Thoughts on that cloud of doom over Florida...

·         Sarah Palin has decided to try once again to make herself politically relevant by spouting off in support of her boy, Newt Gingrich, reeling since he was slapped sideways by the strategically mean Mitt Romney during the last debate prior to the Florida primary. Of course she does so displaying her usual loose grasp of facts, for example in her allusion to Newt’s opponents acting like Stalin – not clear where she’s going with that – and even more so, incorporating Newt’s favorite historically confusing whipping boy, Saul Alinsky.  “What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst."   I’d be willing to bet that she has no fucking idea who Saul Alinsky was – probably thinks he’s the old Jewish guy who runs the deli where she gets her favorite corned beef sandwiches. 

Poor Sarah is having a hard time reconciling the fact that no one is paying any attention to her anymore.  Her only current claim to fame is appearing on Faux News as a guest political commentator for people like notorious pussy Sean Hannity, where she routinely embarrasses herself with full frontal ignorance and an inability to articulate even the simplest thoughts coherently.  But she has inexplicably taken to Newt Gingrich, probably on the assumption that only he would be irrational enough to offer her a high profile role in his administration where she could continue nursing on the teat of whorish notoriety.  But Newt is burning oil pretty badly and she may not have chosen wisely.  We’ll know in a couple of days.

·         Meanwhile, in a stark and shameless example of sunshine state pandering, Mitt Romney blasted Obama for not making NASA a priority during his term.  Oh gee, sorry Mitt; he was kind of busy.  There were two wars to deal with and a global financial crisis.  He saved the auto industry and, like it or not, he saved the banks as well.  He reformed the nation’s health care system. He was attacked constantly and, in spite of a republican party overtly committed to his failure, is still standing.  Imagine if he had proposed increasing the budget for NASA anytime in the last three years; his political opponents would have screamed bloody murder, accused him of misplaced priorities and frivolous expenditures and ridiculed him mercilessly. Yeah, good call, Mitt.  Maybe after the election you and Newt should go on up and spend a few weeks in the space station or something for some quality time together.  

·         Rick Santorum has also apparently decided that he’s not going to win the nomination – big surprise there, Rick – and is now playing nice with Gingrich and Romney, trolling for a Hillary-style, high level appointment.  However his old testament tendencies revealed themselves again yesterday in his bigoted and profoundly ignorant jabber about equality being a singularly christian concept not shared by any other religion.  "It doesn't come from Islam. It doesn't come from the East and Eastern religions. It comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."  As you might guess, this pissed a number of people off, not least those who worship according to Islam and other “Eastern” religions.  This is one of the key problems with christians interjecting their faith into national politics; it’s fundamentally intolerant.

 Clearly that’s the danger in the “christian nation” rhetoric so prevalent in the republican party in the last 30 years, a period that coincides with a steep drop off in church attendance.  If the christian fanatics can’t persuade you to attend, they will try to compel you to through force of law, an idea that would be anathema to our founding fathers, in spite of consistent misinformation from republican “historians” like Professor Gingrich, (who should know better).  As Ben Franklin said, “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and god does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”  I think that pretty much sums it up to any rational person who doesn’t have money invested in the Vatican or own teh parking lot across the street from the Crystal Cathedral. 

·         This need to literally genuflect to the semi-literate and reactionary evangelicals might explain why the filthy rich republican party has trotted out the least attractive group of candidates ever.  Mitt Romney is a man who sprinkles in a few moderate positions with his otherwise by the book conservatism and he’s flogged relentlessly for it by the other candidates.  Newt is a man almost universally loathed by the republican establishment and is so wildly erratic that he goes from blowing Romney’s doors off in South Carolina to self immolation in Florida in the course of two weeks.  Santorum is a delusional religious fanatic endorsed by evangelical leaders and virtually no one else.  And Uncle Ron Paul is deeply committed, well organized and supported by a cadre of true believers but is so far outside the republican mainstream – not to mention the national mainstream – that he's relevant only insofar as he’s able to influence the party platform in Tampa and only then if he wins a lot more delegates than he has so far.  It’s no wonder there’s so much buzz about a none-of-the-above stalemate and a go for broke, wide open convention.